ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the diaries and letters written by Isabella Fane, who travelled to India in 1835. Though Fane’s literary output has received relatively little attention regarding the role that memsahibs played in shaping empire, her intimate account of quotidian life in India offers valuable insights into the development of imperial subjectivity and the rise of women’s travel writing as a genre unto itself in the 19th century. The letters explored here function as a raced and gendered imperial travel narrative that illuminates a feminine viewpoint of domestic and social life in India under the rule of the East India Company. In the roles of ‘helpmeet’ and ‘suffering traveller’ in India, Fane communicates performances of domestic ‘Englishness’ as well as disseminates orientalist representations of India as an ‘exotic’ space peripheral to English customs and culture.
